The first floor of Building 56 will be closed for more than a year while major renovations are made so the former labs and offices can accommodate the current occupants of Building 20.
After work on Building 56 is finished in December 1996, the adjoining Building 16 will be renovated and that first-floor hallway will be closed from late 1996 until completion of the two-phase project in early 1998, according to Sharilee Field, assistant planning officer.
About two-thirds of the occupants of both buildings have moved to Building 68, which formally opened last October. The remainder (mostly toxicology, chemical engineering and chemistry faculty and staff) will all be temporarily housed in Building 16 while work on Building 56 proceeds. They will eventually share the refurbished buildings with the current occupants of Building 20, which is scheduled to be torn down. Slated to go in its place is a new building for the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Laboratory for Computer Science which now occupy rented space in Technology Square.
Signs will be installed outside the buildings to direct pedestrians around the construction, Ms. Field said.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on August 26, 1995.
